Athens used to be a stopover. You flew in, glanced at the Acropolis, maybe wandered Plaka, and then moved on to the islands, the beaches, the mythic elsewhere of Greece. For decades, the capital was treated like a historical preface rather than a destination. That has changed—dramatically, and recently.
“Ten years ago, if you saw tourists walking around the center it was like seeing an exotic bird,” says Fotis Vallatos, restaurateur, longtime travel and food editor of Aegean Airlines’ Blue magazine, and one of the sharpest observers of the city’s food culture.
I was one of those exotic birds when I first met Fotis nearly twenty years ago at a dive bar in the then-seedy Monastiraki neighborhood. I was backpacking solo and intending, yes, just to stop over. But I immediately took to Athens—and to the group of friends around Fotis who invited me into their world (I told that story in the New York Times a few years ago).
In the years since, Fotis has been my go-to expert on all things Greek, but especially on Athens as it has exploded into its own as a fully fledged travel destination, flush with visitors who come for the city itself. Hotels have multiplied. Cafés and bars spill across neighborhoods like Monastiraki that once felt gritty and resolutely local. The inevitable Berlin comparisons surface.
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